Aaron en España

Semana Santa y Más

2006-04-15T05:27:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates in recent weeks, things got a little more normal here, meaning less travel and excitement and a sudden onslaught of school, etc. We went to Portugal with the program the weekend before last, stayed in Lisbon for three nights and explored the city and some of the surrounding areas. It was cool, but I decided to skip the blog on that one, so as not to overload anyone that's reading this with less-than-super information. We visited a castle, a palace, the westernmost point of Europe (once thought of as the end of world), but beyond that, I've had better. However, the Portugese people are for the most part extremely friendly and their language is beautiful even though none of us could understand it. Luckily for us, tons of people spoke English too (although Spanish speakers were more or less non-existent).

Anyway, on to more recent events. Today is the end of perhaps the most important week in Sevilla, Semana Santa (Holy Week). It is a week of religious processions, highlighting beautiful pasos, which are floats with flowers and candles and most importantly, carved and painted wooden statues of the Virgin Mary or Jesus or scenes from Jesus' life. (The oldest of these statues dates to the 12th century.) The catch is that these floats are not placed on trailers or trucks and pulled around the city. They are hoisted on the shoulders of up to 54 men and carried for hours on end. The float-carriers wear headdresses with padding on the back of the neck, but I'm pretty sure it's a tough job.

The floats are accompanied by scores of nazarenos, which are marchers dressed in robes with pointed hoods and narrow eyeholes. This costume looks exactly like that of the Ku Klux Klan (although the colors vary), but let's suffice it to say Spain had them first. The main point of the costume is anonymity, since the nazarenos are doing penance for their sins. To highlight this, they often carry large crosses and march for hours barefoot. The pasos are also often accompanied by large marching bands, although some of them march in silence and silence is expected of the observers as well.

These processions start on Palm Sunday and end today (the day before Easter). The first one every day is in the afternoon and new ones keep coming until early in the morning. On Thursday, the processions began at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and went on until around 7 or 8 in the morning on Friday. I just so happen to live in the tallest building in the one of the most important plazas for these processions. Our plaza was turned into a sort of stadium with risers and seats for people to watch the processions and a walkway for the processions to pass through. These seats have been rented out to the same families for decades and it is supposedly impossible just to decide you want to get a spot in the plaza for any given year. There are also seats for the mayor and other city officials. Our place overlooks all of this and we were able to simply hang out on our terrace and watch everything go down.

The city of Sevilla has been packed all week, and simple tasks like walking to the store (a block away) have taken us a half hour is there happens to be a procession close by. Plus, because of our lucky housing location, we have been listening to bands playing for hours a day for a week. So, as interesting as Semana Santa has been, I'm ready to have my city back. I'll post some pictures later, stay tuned.

Las Fallas

2006-03-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was Las Fallas in Valencia, billed by some as one of the craziest festivals in a country known for its crazy festivals. Can't miss that, right? Las Fallas is alternatively known as the Festival of Fire, since the event revolves around setting on fire dozens of gigantic papier-mache statues all around town to the tune of lights and fireworks and music. (Even though fallas sounds like how we say fire, it actually refers to the statues themselves.)

So we rented a car and took off...the car didn't run well from the start, and the sound system was broken, so we were bumping a pair of iPod speakers and it was getting really old about two hours into the trip. Luckily, that's about when the oil light came on and the car started smoking. So we pull off and discover that the car is gushing antifreeze and smoking. We did what we could to save her, but it was too late. The rental car company did little to help (just promised us our money back and money for a taxi), but eventually we got a taxi to the airport in Granada and rented another car, this time with good sound and a good engine. (We're still working on getting the first company to pay for the difference in price.)

So we finally get to Valencia around midnight on Saturday, and go explore the town. There are fireworks going off everywhere, and the statues are awesome. Every single one looks like it was done by professionals, and most of them are as tall as the buildings themselves. They are like huge caricartures, with everything over-exaggerated and most of them with a political or social message of some sort. Unfortunately, the signs explaining them were in Valenciano (not Spanish) and it was impossible for us to recognize any of the Spanish people they were poking fun at. Still cool.

The best part of this is that even though the townsfolk spends the entire year building these statues, they torch them all (except the best one) at the end of the festival! Sunday night is the burning. Each statue has a team that sets off fireworks, soaks the thing in gasoline and then torches it via a fuse with firecrackers tied onto it. The culmination was a burning of the second-place statue in the town's main plaza, after a symphony-accompanied fireworks show that rivaled any I've ever seen.

The drive home was better than the way there. We stopped and explored some old caves we saw from the side of the road, although we then proceeded to run out of gas soon after. (Not our fault, the needle wasn't even all the way down!) Luckily we were close to a gas station and only killed about an hour.

I don't have any pictures yet of the nightlife, since I didn't want to take my nice (and bulky) camera out at night. These should give you some idea of what went down, though...just envision these things on fire with fireworks going off around them.

One part of a particularly evil-looking falla.

The second-place falla in the main plaza (the centerpiece of the burnings). This was definitely the tallest I saw, but not by much.

My boy Miguel in front of her.
What?

Very Spanish. This is a big pot of paella, a typical southern Spain dish with rice, seafood and years of perfection in it.

¡Carnaval!

2006-02-27T07:10:00.000-08:00

I had some more adventures this weekend, and although I haven't taken a proper shower (read: with soap) for three days, this stuff can´t wait.

I rented a car with three other dudes for the weekend, A) because we were getting travel-hungry, B) because we're in the midst of a five-day weekend, and C) because it was Carnaval in Cadiz! Carnaval is like the Spanish Mardi Gras--it's a big multi-day fiesta that culminates in one crazy night of costumed street-crowding. Cadiz spends all year preparing for it, or so I was told. Some groups of Spaniards wear coordinated costumes and write and rehearse funny songs and dances to perform at Carnaval, and other people just break out singing because they are drunk.

We arrived in Cadiz (on the coast of Southern Spain, about an hour or so from Sevilla) Friday afternoon, and spent the day walking around looking for a place to stay. Every hostel we called beforehand was booked, but we decided to go anyway, and sleep in the car if need be. Long story short, we found a hostel with room, in a great location, where three of our good friends were staying as well. We spent the night meeting Spaniards and dancing around a MASSIVE drum circle in the middle of Cadiz. The people from Cadiz were the nicest I´ve met in Spain, apparently free, at least for Carnaval, of the American-hate that plagues many Europeans.

Saturday night was the big culmination night, with everyone in costume and going crazy. We threw together some disguises despite the looming rain, hoping for the best. We didn't get it. It POURED. At one point, it was raining completely sideways due to the massive coastal winds that Cadiz gets. We braved it for as long as we could and had a pretty good time, although a few of us (myself included) are now sick.

Sunday we got up and drove a little further down the coast to Tarifa, the kite-surfing mecca. It is supposedly one of the best, if not the best, places to kite-surf and wind-surf in the world. It was super windy (duh) but beautiful and awesome nonetheless. We then went on to Gibraltar, that strange pocket of Britain in the midst of Spain and the Mediterranean Sea. It was cool, and odd, and we saw as much as we could although we were all beat from the last two days. We searched for the monkeys (Gibraltar has tons of monkeys) but only saw one. All in all, pretty amazing the variety of places we went, all within two hours of Sevilla and all unique and impressive in their own right. Photos below!

One of the streets decked out pre-Carnaval.

Getting ready to go out...that's me, so hot I'm on fire.

Tarifa. Windy.

They figure that if it has to be windy all the time, they might as well make some money off of it. I have never seen so many windmills in such a short distance anywhere else. The road to and from Tarifa is full of them.

Gibraltar, and the sea beyond.

Fotos de Mi Ciudad: La Catedral

2006-02-27T06:55:00.000-08:00

Also reposted, but now you can enlarge them...they're much better that way. (I just deleted the old post with these pictures and the river pictures on it, in case you were looking for it.)

La Catedral and La Giralda (the tower on the right hand side) at night. This is an amazing sight to see, and is only a few blocks from my place. I walk past it every other night or so, but I always have to stop and look.

Same thing, different angle.

Fotos de Mi Ciudad: El Rio

2006-02-27T06:42:00.000-08:00

I´m reposting these pictures using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer so y'all can open them in a larger window this time around. Yes, Firefox is way better than Internet Explorer, download it, it's free.

Sunset at the River Guadalquivir. The river is a great place to study or make out, the latter illustrated by the two lovebirds below.

About the same time, looking in the opposite direction.

Looking through some palms at a floating restaurant on the river.

¡Ladrones!

2006-02-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

So we´re just playing soccer at a park, my backpack is under a nearby tree, I get distracted with the game and BAM! The backpack is gone. The theives got my new backpack, my wallet (also new and very European), my keys and of the most consequence, my cell phone. (So if you have tried to call me, that's why I didn´t pick up!) So that´s a little depressing, especially because I have been especially careful about all my stuff, except for a few minutes this one time. Oh well, a lesson learned the hard way, I suppose.

If anyone is reading this or looking at my pictures, it would be nice if you´d leave a comment here or there to let me know that you saw it! This one-way communication is not very satisfying!

I don´t know if anyone is ever going to send me anything, but if you are, I think my address was wrong the first time I posted it...we live on the fifth floor, not the fourth, so it should be:

Aaron Butzen
Residencia Pilar Torres
Plaza de San Fransisco, No. 9, Piso 5
41004 Sevilla, Spain

Fotos de Mi Residencia

2006-02-12T06:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, y'all finally get to see my place (or some of it)...I didn´t want to waste too much space showing you everything, but these should give you an idea of what I'm working with.

The living room (salón). This is where we congregate and socialize, if we´re not outside. We have a nice big TV facing the couch too.

The kitchen (cocina) with our meal for the day on the table. It´s old (the kitchen, not the meal)but we have everything we need.
The terrace (terraza). This makes the apartment. The sun shines brighter up here, for real. The view is amazing - directly below us is the Plaza San Francisco, where horse-drawn carriages compete for tourists' money, where the Spanish Inquisition took place, and where much of the Semana Santa festivities take place. To the left is the Cathedral and La Giralda, it´s big tower. Unbelievable.
I'll try to get some pictures up of the view from here, but it´s hard to capture. The ones I took just weren´t good enough.

Clase...¡Que Lástima!

2006-02-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

Well, it turns out that this trip is not just a sightseeing tour, and we actually have to take classes. Who´d have thunk? Anyway, my classes started on Monday but we didn´t really get going until Wednesday because they over-enroll every class, assign rooms to more than one class at the same time, and basically just throw everything together and figure it out when the time comes. Crazy Spaniards.

However, everything worked out in the end (they know what they´re doing, they just take their time doing it) and I now have a schedule of 4 classes, two hours long each, four days a week. We don´t have class on Fridays and my earliest class is at 3 in the afternoon! It makes for some late nights (5 to 9 Monday/Wednesday, 3 to 7 Tuesday/Thursday) but my days of sleeping too late to get to class are over! I hope.

I´m taking Semantics, Syntax, Flamenco: the Cultural Expression of Andalucía, and Cultural Anthropology of Andalucía. All in Spanish of course, and all pretty interesting so far, with the exception of anthropology. I really hope that one picks up a bit because my Attention Deficit Disorder that I´ve developed in college has gotten much worse since my arrival in Spain. However, this semester should be a veritable buffet of learning, and I´m ready to eat.

I´m going to try to take some pictures of my house and Sevilla in general this weekend so you guys can see what I´m up against. If there´s anything particular you´d like to see, let me know and I´ll go photograph it. I´ve already got some good ones in mind though. ¡Hasta luego!

Vale

2006-02-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

The most important word I have learned since I have been here is vale. It loosely translates to OK, but you can say it as an answer to almost anything anyone says to you. When I don´t know what someone just told or asked me and I don´t care, I just say vale and everything is cool.

Anyway, we went to Granada this weekend, which was nice. Another beautiful but dangerous drive (The bus drivers have a wee bit too much confidence in their ability to navigate high altitude turns at high speeds) through the mountains to get there, and we stopped to hike at a national park with wild rock formations in every direction. The downside was that the trail was extremely muddy and since we had no warning of the hike, everyone had their nice shoes on and the only pair of pants they´d brought for the weekend. My Nike Shox were almost annihilated, but I washed them off pretty well in the hotel bathtub.

Here´s a picture of where we hiked, beautiful but for the mud.

Pants rolled up to keep mud off, didn´t do anything for the shoes though! Notice my new Universidad de Sevilla sweatshirt. That´s right, it´s my new school.

We saw a flamenco show in Granada, absolutely captivating. The only instrument is a classical guitar and a myriad of percussion - mostly hand claps from the dancers not dancing at the moment and from the singer, but also a box with a hole in it that one guy sat on and beat on. The rest of the beat comes from the dancers´feet, as they wear shoes with heels and hard soles and stomp like crazy on the hard floor when they get going. They actually help create the music with their feet, and I did not know that people could move their feet so fast, save Michael Flatley. It is a percussive utopia, with complicated and layered rhythms accompanied by singing and shouting. Cool.

The only other thing in Granada is the Alhambra, an ancient Arab palace. It´s massive and you can see it from almost anywhere in the city, since it´s built on a mountain. It was very impressive but after so many tours of breathtaking places, it´s hard to focus on the tour guide or drop your jaw any lower than the last time. You can also ski in Granada, but it wasn´t included in our package and we would have missed the Alhambra, so nobody went.

Here is one small portion of the gigantic palace.

A famous pation with a fountain with twelve lions supporting it. The lions look more like dogs because although the residents (Arabs) were from Africa, they had been in Spain so long they´d never actually seen a lion, and just made them to look like the descriptions they´d heard.

Hasta luego!

Información Incorecto

2006-02-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

I guess I was misinformed about how to call Spain...I think what you need to do is dial 011 for international access, then the country code for Spain, which is 34, then my number, 695.457.848. Do not dial 034 as previously reported. Or do. Whatever makes you happy.

Más Sobre Sevilla

2006-02-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

Every day I´m here, I feel more blessed than the day before. It has begun to sink in that I will living and studying in one of the most beautiful cities in Spain for an entire semester. Sevilla is amazing, there are so many things to see and do, so much history and art and architecture and sun! It rained the first few days we were here, but apparently the city had not had any rain for a ridiculous amount of time, so it was good for my town, I guess. Now it just rains sunshine all day, and we can sit out on our terrace and just soak it up. At night it gets cold, and our apartment is without central heat, but we have space heaters that do the trick quite nicely. Our apartment is wonderful and we have simply the best location in all of Sevilla, I can´t stress that enough - my roommates and I are truly blessed.

There are now six of us living there, whereas we only came with three. One of my friends wasn´t happy with where he was living, so they moved him into the closet yesterday (Pilar made it into a bedroom first, it´s really not as bad as it sounds) and our other two roommates, who have been in Sevilla (in a different apartment) for a semester already, just got back from traveling around Europe yesterday. Both of them play guitar and one of them studies jazz in college, and we jammed and sang for about an hour today on our terrace. What a blessing - I think API actually read my housing preferences and put me with these guys on purpose, which is cool. I am going to get much better at guitar and try to bum some lessons from the jazz dude.
I´ll post some pictures of the roommates and place soon.

Okay, what else have I done...I went to a football (read: soccer) game on Sunday, and it was just completely nuts. There are two teams in Sevilla, rivals obviously, and we went and saw the better team upset a team from somewhere else in Spain. What a big deal! There was a guy with a microphone and loudspeakers leading the crowd in chants the entire time, very catchy chants that always included SEVILL YYAH! They were waving big flags and I tell you the truth it was an experience, but it was kind of pricey. At least I did it while I still have some money, eh?

Today we went to La Catedral and La Giralda, a few blocks from my place. La Giralda is a huge tower from when the place was a mosque, and the view from there is sweet. The whole church is huge (the third biggest cathedral in the world) and very, very old.

I will tell you all more about these places and post some pictures later, for now I have to go since they are closing the API office. Feel free to call me, I will try to make some calls soon but it is a little expensive!

Algunas Fotos Más

2006-01-29T06:41:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more photos I couldn´t resist posting. If you click on any of these, you will get a larger image. Also, while I´m thinking about it, here´s my address in Spain:

Aaron Butzen

Residencia Pilar Torres

Plaza de San Fransisco, No. 9, Piso 4

41004 Sevilla, Spain

Guy playing the recorder outside La Mezquita in Córdoba. Pretty surreal and very cool. I took this picture of him from far away and he shouted for us to come closer and take some pictures.

So we did.
The ancient Muslim arches of La Mezquita. They built the mosque to resemble a forest where you could lose yourself in praises to Allah. As such, there are hundreds of pillars (trees) and arches throughout the mosque.A detail of one of the cupolas inside La Mezquita.

Fotografías de la Primera Semana (Dos)

2006-01-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

Here´s some pictures from Córdoba, our last stop before Sevilla. I have a lot from here because I finally started using my camera and it was a nice day. Pictures from earlier in the week are in a separate post below.

Me and my boys in Córdoba, and a girl who is cute and rides mountain bikes in Northern Cali. Need I say more?

Orange trees in the courtyard of La Mezquita. These are everywhere in southern Spain.
A statue in Córdoba. Pretty old, I think.
The tower of La Mezquita.
Ditto.

Fotografías de la Primera Semana (Uno)

2006-01-29T05:47:00.000-08:00

The view from my hotel balcony in Madrid. They crammed three twin beds into the room, but this pretty much made up for sleeping so close to two dudes I´d just met.

Outside El Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Just another completely ancient and priceless work of art in El Museo del Prado. No big deal.

Just to give you an idea of the layout of Toledo. It was an overcast day so the picture isn´t too great, but let me assure you, this place is awesome.

Outside the cathedral in Toledo. That´s me dwarfed by the majesty of this place.

El País Magnífico de España

2006-01-27T05:55:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos y familia, starting today I will be irregularly updating this blog with words and photos documenting my experiences in the wonderful country that is Spain. You may find my English has suffered as a result of my improving Spanish skills, but rest assured that it is worth it. Anyway, I am finally in Sevilla after a week of traveling. I arrived in Madrid on Monday, stayed there Monday and Tuesday nights, left for Toledo on Wednesday, stayed in Toledo Wednesday night, went to Córdoba on Thursday and finally arrived in Sevilla Thursday night. The country is magnificent. It is the second most mountainous country in Europe (after Switzerland), and many of you know how I love mountains. I did not expect this many! Of course, several of the ranges are low and sparse, but there are large, snowy, rocky ones as well. Spain is also much bigger than Switzerland, smaller only than France in European terms. In American terms, it´s about the size of Texas. Madrid was nice, but commercial and crowded and a little too modern. Of course, there is a point in Madrid that is the EXACT geographical center of Spain, and I stood on it in la Puerta de Sol.

We saw el Palacio Real (Royal Palace) in Madrid too and the place is simply breathtaking--ornate and grandiose beyond description, with over 2,000 rooms, most of them worthy and unique attractions in their own right. I obviously did not see them all. We then went north (this is Tuesday) to El Escorial, a large and ancient monastery in the mountains. The setting (the outside) was more interesting to me than the inside. Wednesday we went to El Museo del Prado, a musuem that houses the most famous works of Velazquez, Goya, Bosco and others. It was amazing to actually see these paintings and sculptures I´ve studied or heard of in school, and realize that most of the collection is completely, utterly priceless. Adrian Brody was there, too, which excited the flaky girls on the trip, but I don´t even really know who he is. The musuem got tiring after a bit, though, and then on we went to Toledo.

Toledo is the most amazing place I have ever been. It is ancient in the most literal sense of the word. It is built on a mountain, flanked by a rushing river and filled with history and stone. The cathedral there is like nothing I have ever imagined in my entire life. It´s like a glimpse of heaven...untold hours and dollars went into it´s creation and it is honestly beyond words. The detail and scope...it is impossible to fathom how it was ever done. We also saw the most important painting El Greco ever did, El Entierro del Conde Orgaz. Look up Toledo and the Cathedral and the painting online, it will be enlightening. Toledo oozes history.

Yesterday we left Toledo and went to Córdoba, which houses La Mezquita, an ancient mosque that was turned into a Christian cathedral. It is very impressive, but honestly the Christians ruined the ambiance of the mosque. Inside is the Arab architecture with odd and tacky additions of Christian altars and crucifixes and the like...it is very interesting and very strange, and actually sad that such a historical place was tainted by the takeover of Christianity...I just think they should have built their own church.

Finally, we got to Sevilla last night. I am living with two guys from my program and two guys from the year-long program who are traveling or at home right now, but we will meet them soon. We live alone but have a señora that comes and cooks and cleans and brings food and even does our laundry if we want, and she seems very nice and helpful and accomodating. We have more provided for us than I ever imagined we would. The apartment is old but has modern electricity and water. It is in the very heart of Sevilla, across from the city hall, and we have a large terrace (we are four floors up) that overlooks the city and from it we can see La Giralda and La Catedral, the most famous landmarks of Sevilla. We have the best location and perhaps the coolest home of anyone in the program.

That´s all I have time for...it´s past lunch time and siesta time, and I haven´t done either! My cell phone number is 695 457 848, and I think you dial 034 plus the number in the states to reach me. We are seven hours ahead of central time in the U.S. I´ll try to put up some pictures later. I love you all, I do not miss you yet but I soon will I imagine! Hasta luego!